Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging.

  • Seager, H. W. (Herbert West), 1848-
Date:
1896
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Natural history in Shakespeare's time : being extracts illustrative of the subject as he knew it / Made by H. W. Seager, M. B., &c. Also pictures thereunto belonging. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    It is said that no Sparrows have ever been seen at a place called Lindham in the moors below Hatfield [York- shire]. Camden's Britannia, col. 850. Spawn. CORIOLANUS, ii. 2, 82. This is to be noted, that the foresaid engendering of [fish] is not sufficient to accomplish generation, unless, when their eggs be laid or spawn cast, both male and female take it between them, and keep a-turning of it, thereby to breathe a lively spirit into it, and, as it were, besprinkle it with a vital dew, as it floateth upon the water. But turn they it and toss it, breathe they upon it as much as they will, yet all those little eggs of their spawn do not hit and come to proof; for if they did, all seas and lakes, and all rivers and pools, would be so pestered full with fishes, that a man would see nothing else. HolIa?id's Piiny, bk. ix. ch. 1. V. Fish. Spear-grass. i. King Henry IV., ii. 4, 340. Spear-grass is good for the sciatica, or the gout. Lupton, Notable Things, bk. ii. § 91. Touching the grass, which, by reason of the pricks that it bears is named Aculeatum^ there be three sorts of it ; the first is that which ordinarily hath five such pricks in the head or top thereof, and thereupon they call it Penta- dactylon, the Five-finger grass ; these pricks, when they be wound together, they use to put up into the nostrils, and draw them down again, for to make the nose bleed. Holland's Plifiy, bk. xxv. ch. xix. Spermaceti. Telling me the sovereign'st thing on earth Was parmaceti for an inward bruise. i. King Henry IV., i. 3, 58.